Anthropocene Histories Seminar: Learning from Past Sustainability

About the seminar:
Sustainability has emerged since the 1970s as a crucial concept for rethinking relationships between human practices and the biosphere. It is used in policy spaces and public discussions with a thin or non-existent historicity. It is seen as something that ‘we’ (modern, westernised societies) have not been doing – or not recently – but should start doing, as soon as possible, and should definitely do in the future. The term is valued for its apparent political neutrality. It can be taken to imply comfortably that ‘we’ can continue doing the same things so long as we do them ‘sustainably’ (e.g. ‘sustainable growth’ and ‘sustainable development’). It can, of course, be used more radically too. Given its ubiquity in conversations from global to local, it is essential for historians to bring historical depth and historically-informed critical analysis to the wider understanding of sustainability, its past, and what experience shows to be its strengths and weaknesses as an approach to maintaining planetary liveability.

This panel considers what sustainability looked like in the medieval period, how different communities thought about it, and what we might learn from their practices and ideas. It also explores the ‘darker’ side of medieval sustainability – that is, the complex effects of environmental regulation on communities, social justice issues, biodiversity and the management of animals. Finally, it opens up questions about how historians of all periods might use the concept itself: modern in formulation, and unstable, as it is repurposed in different contexts. What, then, can we bring to today’s discourses of sustainability?